Privately run jails are a mark of American "reinvented government" that has been picked up by neoconservatives in Canada. - Jane Jacobs

I have learned yet again (this has been going on all my life) what folly it is to take any thing for granted without examining it skeptically.

I was taught that the American's right to be a free individual, not at the mercy of the state, was hard-won and that its price was eternal vigilance, that I too would have to be vigilant. I was made to feel that it would be a disgrace to me, as an individual, if I should not value or should give up rights that were dearly bought. I am grateful for that upbringing.

Beneficent spirals, operating by benign feedback, mean that everything needful is not required at once: each individual improvement is beneficial for the whole